I recently saw the Cinedeck recorder that uses 2.5" SSD, records at 10bit or 12bit 4:2:2 or 4:4:4, and includes a 7" monitor. Street price less than $8K.

A Flash XDR with some of the small HD monitors currently available is in the same price range. Something for CD to think about in the future, a Nano or XDR type recorder combined with a small HD monitor. This would make a very nice package for many applications. A Nano Flash, a Flash XDR and a "MonoFlash" in the product line.

Something to think about Dan!

David Rogers (a happy Flash XDR owner)

Hi David-
Great suggestion, we'll keep it in mind as we move forward. Glad to hear the XDR is working well.

Best-

Hi David. I own both the Cinedeck and the XDR. While the idea of a built in screen sounds like a good idea, I still prefer the XDR for its weight, form factor and power draw are a few things that CD got right on the XDR. The flexibility of having a *seperate* LCD or no LCD at all, make the XDR much easier to work with than having a heavy, large and power hungry LCD.

Hi Aaron:
Can you give us an idea of what the power draw is like with the cinedeckHD versus the XDR ? Also, does not the cinedeckHD also offer uncompressed HD 4:2:2 & 12 bit 4:4:4 recording to removable solid state drives ? I also thought Charles Dautrement was going to offer a 2K option as well for his cinedeck creation ? I understood the normal operation of the cinedeckHD was compressed Cineform codec ? Is the cinedeck actually larger than the XDR ?

MJ (Another happy XDR owner)

EDIT: Aaron, I'm surprised you think having a monitor built into the recorder is a big negative

Hi Mark. I'll be doing a full review of the Cinedeck and even a Cinedeck vs. XDR/Nano comparison. I won't be posting it here, since it's probably not information that CD would think is relevant in a forum for CD products. I'll post a link to the review though.

Currently (build 182), the Cinedeck is a Cineform only recorder. There are no other codec options at all. You have one choice, Cineform, that's it. I've been informed that DNxHD support will be added shortly but since that's a future feature and doesn't actually exist yet, I hate to even post that it will be there shortly. I don't like to talk about features that don't exist.

4:2:2 10 bit and 4:4:4 12 bit recording are indeed supported.

Uncompressed recording is not supported. There are no plans, that I know of, for any kind of uncompressed recording to be added at all.

As far as I know, the Cinedeck is capable of 2k acquisition but I don't have anything that sends a 2k signal so you won't be hearing about 2k in any of my personal tests. My camera sends an HD signal and I don't plan on replacing my camera any time soon, so all of my reviews will be based on HD resolutions.

Yes, the Cinedeck is quite a bit bigger than the XDR. This is also something that will be covered in the review. 120 cubic inches vs. 108 cubic inches.

Indeed I do think the monitor being built in is useless when the recorder is mounted at the camera. I hand hold a LOT. With the recorder at the back of my rig, I can't see it so the monitor is doing me no good anyway.

When the recorder is not being operated at the camera, then yes the monitor is a big plus. The only time I miss a monitor on the XDR is when I'm operating the recorder away from the camera or doing playback with the recorder, neither are things I do often.

Oh, also. regarding power, the Cinedeck uses an astonishing 72 watts. Try and wrap your head around that and consider or not if that can even be considered "battery powered". Yes, that is a full 6 amps @ 12V. Consider how fast this will chew through a Dionic 90 battery.

My camera was previously the most power hungry 12v device in my collection and that uses a paltry 44 watts by comparison. My camera will chew through a STACK of Dionic 90s in a few hours. I can maybe get an hour out of a single Dionic 90. My old camera could go for over 4 hours on a Dionic 90.

As another comparison, I measured the XDR power draw at around 9 watts. Yes 9. That's 8 times less power than the Cinedeck.

I'll do some testing but I don't expect more than about 20 minutes of operation from a Cinedeck and a Dionic 90.

My bad Aaron. It sounds like a great idea. I would imagine the folks at CD could beat the 72w power consumption! My thought would be another choice in the HD recorder arsenal. I sometimes work with HD POV cameras and having the monitor and recorder together would be nice. Fewer cables and batteries. I have an idea for a bracket/power system for a small HD monitor and a Nano Flash. Handles on both end, with the monitor and Nano side by side and the common battery on the back. If I implement it (read, come into some extra cash to buy the Nano), I'll post pics of it.

Regards
David

Ok, so I tried a bit of testing on battery power. Dionic 90 says maximum output, 90 watts. Maximum "lighting" 75 watts. The Cinedeck is about 72 watts but a Dionic 90 will not run it for more than a few minutes. I have a feeling that the Dionic 90 doesn't like being run at 100% max output for more than a few moments.

I also have some more powerful Anton Bauer "clone batteries". I tried running the Cinedeck on my most powerful battery and the Cinedeck took it from 5 bars full charge, to 1 bar near dead in less than 5 minutes.

It's a good thing that battery powering the unit is not something that is important to me.

Another point of comparison is the S.two OB-1. Drawing a measly 20 watts! That's impressive.

My bad Aaron. It sounds like a great idea. I would imagine the folks at CD could beat the 72w power consumption! My thought would be another choice in the HD recorder arsenal. I sometimes work with HD POV cameras and having the monitor and recorder together would be nice. Fewer cables and batteries. I have an idea for a bracket/power system for a small HD monitor and a Nano Flash. Handles on both end, with the monitor and Nano side by side and the common battery on the back. If I implement it (read, come into some extra cash to buy the Nano), I'll post pics of it.

Regards
David

Well, luckily, it's not the LCD that chews through the power. It's the processors in the recorder. My Marshall LCD of the same size will go an entire day on a single Anton Bauer battery.

Hi Aaron:
OK 72 watts is running a workstation class laptop PC ! Therefore, I must conclude the cinedeckHD is a glorified micro PC solution. I hope Charles keeps up his product development. I sympathize because building something that you can actually send to someone to test is way harder then thinking one up on paper. I understood Intel has a new core i7 CPU which draws very little current and is designed to go only to laptop manufacturers. Perhaps the video/audio capture circuit pulls heavy current ? @ 72 watts there has to be something in their drawing more than 1 amp !

.Another point of comparison is the S.two OB-1. Drawing a measly 20 watts! That's impressive.

Hi Aaron-
Thanks for the info on the CineDeck. I look forward to your review. Obviously this is quite a different recorder from the Flash XDR or the nanoFlash. I would like to know the positives and the negatives, as there is no perfect recorder (well, until Mark brings out his recorder!!).

There are a lot of very talented people working in the area of portable HD recorders. It's an exciting marketplace to watch and participate in.

Best-
Mike Schell

PS FYI, the nanoFlash draws about 6 Watts.

Hi Aaron-
Thanks for the info on the CineDeck. I look forward to your review. Obviously this is quite a different recorder from the Flash XDR or the nanoFlash. I would like to know the positives and the negatives, as there is no perfect recorder (well, until Mark brings out his recorder!!)......Well, until Mark can build a power supply circuit which doesn't fry his recording circuit board after 5 minutes ! The power supply circuit is supposed to be the easy part.
There are a lot of very talented people working in the area of portable HD recorders. It's an exciting marketplace to watch and participate in.....I'm very gifted in busting stuff ! I have great ability in this area. I haven't been able to bust my Flash XDR, therefore, I can confirm to you it is an excellent product ! We hope to have a second prototype of our recorder by August to try again. It's now been well over a year and I still don't have a demonstrate -able prototype to show anyone ! Making a SSDR is a **VERY** expensive undertaking ! You need to have a bottomless pit of money ! Mike ! You must be a multi-millionaire, because it's reeeeeeaaaly expensive to do this !

Best-
Mike Schell

PS FYI, the nanoFlash draws about 6 Watts.[/QUOTE]

Hi Mark. I think calling the Cinedeck a glorified micro PC is a bit of a stretch. It's a very powerful and complicated little brick that far exceeds any piece of gear that I know of at this price. A masterfully engineered little box. YES it consumes a LOT of power, but what are you getting for that consumption in return. Read more in my review.

Ok, so I tried a bit of testing on battery power. Dionic 90 says maximum output, 90 watts. Maximum "lighting" 75 watts. The Cinedeck is about 72 watts but a Dionic 90 will not run it for more than a few minutes. I have a feeling that the Dionic 90 doesn't like being run at 100% max output for more than a few moments.

Anton Bauer came out with a "high current" version of the Dionic within the past year. Lots of Steadicam Ops running big HD cameras are snapping them up to deal with their high draw cameras.

Looking forward to your review Aaron. I know right now that CD has throught through the form factor quite well from a practical standpoint and it has a lot of pluses over the Cinedeck and the KiPro in that regard. Weight, size and simplicity being the big ones. You can slap a nanoFlash on a Steadicam rig and not have to worry about it frying the wires in the post from too much draw, super light in weight, slap some velcro on it and just pitch it at the camera, wire it up in a minute and you are good to go.

Looking forward to CD's 422 10bit device with a solid display cover and a re-engineered card enclosure housing. ;)

Hi Mark. I think calling the Cinedeck a glorified micro PC is a bit of a stretch. It's a very powerful and complicated little brick that far exceeds any piece of gear that I know of at this price. A masterfully engineered little box. YES it consumes a LOT of power, but what are you getting for that consumption in return. Read more in my review....Hi Aaron: The reason I referred to it as a glorified PC, was because it draws power like some of the workstation class power PC laptops. I wasn't trying to denigrate the product per se, but you have to admit it's power drain levels for remote production are unreasonable considering it's application. I have every respect for the great development work Charles Dautremont has done with the cinedeckHD (I may buy one myself !). After all his recorder is to market while mine isn't ! This is a feat to be respected indeed !

Ok, so the current draw might be too great for a single Dionic 90. I have an Anton Bauer QBH, which allows me to gang up 4 batteries at once. I did a test with only two Dionic 90's fully charged. The Cinedeck has gone for over 1.5 hours with two Dionic 90 batteries. That is straight recording during the entire 1.5 hours.

I think that's reasonably good recording time for two Dionic 90 batteries.

Hi Aaron:
Two Dionic 90's equals 90 minutes. I think this is workable, but not very impressive. I can run my Flash XDR for over 4 hours continually in Record on one Anton Bauer Elipse battery (10.5 Ah @ 7.4 Volts nominal output voltage) This battery can only sustain a maximum drain rate of 6 Amperes. I suppose the heavy power drain of the cinedeckHD recorder unit in full operational mode is the price to be paid for having the level of functionality it offers.

I understand this a review however, if one were to be operating the Cinedeck you would want to use the DionicHC batteries and not the plain Dionics. You would kill them in no time and at $400 to $500 per batt, that would be an expensive mistake in my view.

Here are some product pages with some specs:

Anton/Bauer - Products - Dionic HC (http://www.antonbauer.com/Products/DionicHC)

Anton/Bauer - Products - Dionic 90 (http://www.antonbauer.com/Products/Dionic90)

You're right Andrew. Except that I don't have any of those HCX batteries. I do have Dionic 90s, so I can't test what I don't have. Either way, all of this is not a big deal since my camera also draws an insane amount of power, having a recorder that does the same means I probably am not doing too many shoots battery powered. I have 6 batteries right now and that would really only get me through a few hours battery powered on this rig.

However, when using my XDR recorder, I've already done plenty of four hour concert events, completely handheld and with only a single battery change.

Hey Aaron:
I understand that the cinedeckHD, since it is a glorified PC, will also have the ability to record uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 & 4:4:4 12 bit in upcoming versions ! I understood Charles to have said they use a blackmagic capture card inside, and since the blackmagic card has the capability to capture in full raster uncompressed 10 & 12 bit in up to 4:4:4, then this launches this recorder into it's own orbit. I don't think there is anything which does uncompressed recording for under 40 K $.
You will finally have a SSDR (Sorry-Portable-Micro PC) capable of directly recording what your Viper camera can output in it's full resolution. You must be happy :) If only we could have gotten the Flash XDR uncompressed 10 bit option. How much is the cinedeckHD anyway ?

Hi Mark. I'm certain that the XDR will also have uncompressed recording capability. It really only makes sense for CD to create this feature for the XDR.

The Cinedeck Extreme (4:4:4) is around $8,000 if I recall correctly. The 4:2:2 recorder is priced closer to the cost of the XDR though.

Just to be clear, my understanding is that the Cinedeck will have all three codec options in the near future. That is, Cineform, DNxHD and Uncompressed. Currently the Cinedeck interface offers Cineform only as an option.

Sorry I forgot to address your other point. Yes, the Cinedeck can also run Windows OS. They do offer what they call a "dual boot" option so that you can boot the Cinedeck to Windows or to the Cinedeck interface. The dual boot option allows you to run a full blown NLE on the Cinedeck itself although, you'd probably want to connect to an external LCD to use it this way.

The dual boot option was not available yet so I don't have this option. I think it's more expensive too since it requires the internal storage to be large enough to install a complete Windows OS and NLE on. Maybe in the future they'd be able to bundle it with Premiere or Avid already installed. That would be pretty neat.

Sorry I forgot to address your other point. Yes, the Cinedeck can also run Windows OS. They do offer what they call a "dual boot" option so that you can boot the Cinedeck to Windows or to the Cinedeck interface. The dual boot option allows you to run a full blown NLE on the Cinedeck itself although, you'd probably want to connect to an external LCD to use it this way.////Oh wow ! How cool is that ! I could shoot, check, and post all on the same unit on location ?! Oh ! No way ! I think I'm going to faint ! Where do I send the check !

dual boot option was not available yet so I don't have this option. I think it's more expensive too since it requires the internal storage to be large enough to install a complete Windows OS and NLE on. Maybe in the future they'd be able to bundle it with Premiere or Avid already installed. That would be pretty neat....Oh no way ! Wooooo Hoooooooo ! I'm so gonna buy this recorder - uh-micro PC - No -deck ! No ! - Recording NLE !

Hi Mark. I'm certain that the XDR will also have uncompressed recording capability. It really only makes sense for CD to create this feature for the XDR.

The Cinedeck Extreme (4:4:4) is around $8,000 if I recall correctly. The 4:2:2 recorder is priced closer to the cost of the XDR though.

Just to be clear, my understanding is that the Cinedeck will have all three codec options in the near future. That is, Cineform, DNxHD and Uncompressed. Currently the Cinedeck interface offers Cineform only as an option.....Oh be still my fribulating heart ! Avid DNxHD recording ! Hello Avid Media Composer broadcast post workflow ! Imagine a documentary or news or Discovery Channel production team coming home from Asia with a rough cut or semi fine cut already completed on location !

Well, I sincerely hope you're right about the Flash XDR getting this option ! My SSDR project is going to be soooo eclipsed as I predicted it would be. It looks like Convergent Design & cinedeckHD (Charles Dautremont) are so way ahead of the curve ! Remind me to go tell that guy he's a genius !